The Nigerian economic system has been one which has given the business solely to the wealthy making the poor to be poorer
A good example is the transportation industry which has been hijacked by the few rich people who have almost privatized the country’s transport system today.
We have countless of transport companies but many of them are out of business because bigwigs like Uber and Taxify have recently dominated the business with their technology.
Government is not even left behind as almost all state governments have ventured into the transport business and therefore enslaving drivers who are ought to be empowered.
Similarly, the trend has also taken over the technology market. There has been information that Nigeria’s home of technology, Computer Village has been hijacked by the big players in the industry.
Daily Family(DF) visited Nigeria’s number one technology hub, Computer Village in Ikeja to find out about this issue.
It was disheartening when DF realized the level at which this as eaten deep into the market. In our chat with phone repairers in the popular market. DF gathered that the business which used to be a great and lucrative one has become a deficit business.
Speaking with one of the phone repairers who prefer to be anonymous, he revealed how the phone repair business has gone from a being lucrative business to a frustrating one, he said that two to four years ago, they had issues of coping with numerous customers, according to him, the story has changed, while speaking further he claimed that he has not touched a phone for that day, at about 3 pm.
When asked the reason why customers prefer to go to companies to have their phones repaired, he responded that the street engineers in Computer Village do not have a comfortable place for the customers, he thinks that most customers would prefer a place where they can sit and have fresh air while their phone is being repaired.
Another Street Engineer who identified himself a Chidi claimed to have been in the business for over four years “four years ago the business was far far better than this, anything that is moving everybody will want to go into it, now we have a lot of companies”
When asked about the proficiency of their competitors, he authoritatively said, there is no speciality with the companies phone engineers “They are not better than us, most of them(companies) when they open their company they will come here that they need engineers, they employ from here because they have the money, the engineers working with Slot, working with Micro Station, they are engineers from the street, they are not better than us” he added.
He further added that some of the engineers in the company bring phones to the street engineers to fix, he said customers only prefer them because of their big names.
“Slot does not pay their engineers, engineers pay slot, they pay N20,000 every week. If I have N20,000 to pay, I will be working with Slot.”
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“Sorry to say, Nigerian government are not helping, they are working for their pockets alone. Nigeria has talents, there are talents everywhere if they really want to help they know what to do”
He condemns the sharing of N10,000 by the Federal government, according to him, he said ” What will N10,000 do, if they want to help they know what they can do”
Speaking about their expenses he lamented the high rate of payment from space owners to government agencies.
He said ” We pay every year, there’s a certain amount we pay yearly, apart from that, we pay to Kai. we pay to environmental, we pay every day, even if we have not made any sales for the day, it is not their business, once you are out, you must pay.”
It was a heartfelt experience as the engineers decry their condition, their stand was very free, DF spent over 30 mins there and only a customer came there at that moment; a space that house about twelve engineers.
